Molecular Stethoscope Announces Completion of its NAFLD/NASH Study and Podium Presentation of Results by Dr. Naga Chalasani at the AASLD Liver Meeting 2020

PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Molecular Stethoscope, Inc., a precision medicine biotechnology company, announces completion of its human proof-of-concept study describing the stratification of NAFLD/NASH patients with clinically relevant and advanced liver fibrosis using the company's Technology Platform. The results of this study will be presented at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Annual Meeting - The Liver Meeting 2020 by Naga Chalasani, M.D., Professor of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Interim Chair in the Department of Medicine at Indiana University in the USA. Dr. Chalasani is the leading author of the AASLD Practice Guidelines for the diagnosis and management of NAFLD/NASH disease. "Molecular Stethoscope's highly accurate and robust Technology Platform recapitulates and extends known liver-specific differential expression and has the potential to meet the urgent clinical and therapy development needs for NAFLD/NASH patients," commented Dr. Chalasani. Guillermo Elias, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer at Molecular Stethoscope stated, "We are excited to share the positive results of this study with the medical and scientific communities. We are focused on developing novel clinical-grade products that we believe will have a significant impact on NAFLD/NASH clinical practice and in Pharma / Biotech R&D to improve the health of patients."

The study is titled "Whole-Transcriptome Cell-Free Messenger RNA Characterization of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease," and it will be presented during The Liver Meeting 2020 session "NAFLD and NASH: Prognostic and Diagnostic Methods" on November 14^th, 2020, 5:30-7:00 PM EST, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and the progressive stage of disease, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is the liver manifestation of an underlying metabolic disruption also associated with obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Approximately 30% of the USA and worldwide populations have NAFLD, with 5-12% of this population subset expected to have already progressed to the more advanced disease, NASH. The reference method for staging fibrosis and follow up of NAFLD/NASH patients is liver biopsy. Liver biopsy serves as an FDA-selected drug development tool for Pharma / Biotech R&D studies; however, longitudinal biopsies, subjectivity of pathological interpretation and sampling bias due to disease heterogeneity are well known challenges of this invasive procedure.

The underlying pathologies of NAFLD and other metabolic diseases include steatosis, inflammation, glucose disruption and fibrosis. "Molecular Stethoscope's Technology Platform is disease-agnostic, and we are building a knowledge database of overlapping and unique pathological pathways disrupted in diseases to generate dynamic information for actionable patient stratification and monitoring," said John J. Sninsky, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Molecular Stethoscope. "We are using lessons learned in developing and deploying clinical-grade DNA-Seq liquid biopsy products with added technology development due to unique challenges of measuring cf-mRNA to establish clinical-grade technology platform," added Dr. Sninsky.

"We would like to thank the contributions of our medical and scientific collaborators and NAFLD/NASH patients for participating in this study," acknowledged Dr. Elias.

More information about the results of this study is available in the Study Abstract in the AASLD Liver Meeting 2020 website:

"Whole-Transcriptome Cell-Free Messenger RNA Characterization of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease"

https://aasldpubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hep.31578

More information about the Study Session "NAFLD and NASH: Prognostic and Diagnostic Methods" at The Liver Meeting 2020 on November 14^th, 2020, 5:30-7:00 PM EST, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, can be found in The AASLD Liver Meeting 2020 website:

https://tlmdx.aasld.org/event/parallel-session-nafld-and-nash-prognostic-and-diagnostic-methods

About Molecular Stethoscope
Molecular Stethoscope is a precision medicine company based in Silicon Valley, California, focused on discovering, developing and commercializing non-invasive and dynamic products for the early detection, diagnosis and treatment-response monitoring of chronic diseases starting with the liver (NAFLD/NASH) and the central nervous system (Alzheimer's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis). Molecular Stethoscope was co-founded by Dr. Stephen Quake, Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, and co-President of the Chan Zuckerberg BioHub, and Dr. Eric Topol, Director and Founder, Scripps Research Translational Institute; Chair of Innovative Medicine, Scripps. The Company's proprietary and novel Next-Generation cf-mRNA Liquid Biopsy-Artificial Intelligence Technology Platform integrates cell-free mRNA (cf-mRNA) with RNA-Seq, clinical information, and purpose-built bioinformatics and machine learning and artificial intelligence to generate clinically actionable, dynamic information to fundamentally change how healthcare is delivered at scale.

Forward Looking Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, but not limited to statements about the Company's expectations regarding its proprietary Technology Platform. Forward looking statements are subject to uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements.

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SOURCE Molecular Stethoscope, Inc.